


Everything I Ever Wanted

by lavagay



Series: Warmth [2]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Bullying, Homophobia, Insomnia, M/M, More Tags Will Apply, Will Stronghold Gets A Makeover, mental health
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-05-27 04:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15016625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavagay/pseuds/lavagay
Summary: Turns out getting the one thing that was supposed to make everything better doesn't make all your problems go away. Will and Warren come to terms with that.Sequel to Warmth.





	1. The First Night

It was the middle of the first night since Will’s dad had kicked him out of the house. The younger boy was sound asleep, radiating heat as he clung to the side of Warren’s body. Warren mindfully ran his fingers through his partner’s silken hair, focusing on the stilted inhale and long, breathy exhale of Will’s breath.

When the clock struck 4 am, Warren resigned himself to the reality that he’d be facing another sleepless night and carefully, as not to wake Will, he dismounted the bed and stumbled in the darkness toward the adjacent room. 

He flicked on the light. Warren hadn’t changed much about the room since his mom lived in it. He’d cleaned, of course, and changed the sheets on the bed, but he couldn’t bring himself to redecorate like he had the rest of the apartment, and the old, creaking rocking chair where his mother would sit to tell him stories, (where he’d later sit to tell her stories as she faded from him), stayed facing the bed.

That’s where he sat when things got particularly bad, which was happening quite frequently lately. There, he’d rock back and forth in contemplative (see: angsty) silence and will the sun to rise. 

Sometimes, he’d leaf through the pages of his mom’s old diary, which he kept just where she’d left it, tucked in the tattered case of her pillow. The dated entries, if read in chronological order, told the story of a lovesick woman’s descent into madness-- beginning with flowery poetry, intelligent prose, and skillful portraits of the family, and ending with nonsensical drivel, phrases repeated in panic, and indecipherable doodles, ultimately concluding in pages scribbled out entirely. 

If read backwards, however, which was the way Warren chose to page through it, it was a tale of growth and getting better; the journal told of Fiona Peace’s inspirational journey from darkness into light. 

Beneath his mother’s, Warren kept a near-identical journal of his own writing and art, though he’d never show it to anyone. He’d pretty much gotten over the idea that writing poetry is too “gay” around the second or third time he literally took it in the ass for another man, but revealing the deep inner-workings of his own emotions was still way out of his comfort zone. So, like always, he’d keep that shit buried in his gay little diary and continue to pretend he’s never felt an emotion other than angst in his entire life. 

At 6:45, he put down his pen and snuck back into the bedroom to pretend he’d been asleep all that time. Not once did Warren’s eyes close for more than a blink until Will’s alarm went off at seven and he pretended to stir to life. 

“Morning, baby,” murmured Warren in the kind of groggy voice you use when you haven’t spoken in hours. He cleared his throat. “How’d you sleep?” 

Will’s eyes widened as he adjusted to wakefulness and looked around at his unfamiliar surroundings, totally unaccustomed to waking up in another man’s bedroom. As soon as his sleep-addled brain had time to recall the happenings of the night before, Will tried his hardest to pull the corners of his lips into a smile, but the sadness in his eyes was anything but reassuring. The way he nuzzled his cheek against his boyfriend’s chest reminded Warren of a puppy trying fruitlessly to dig into a solid surface.  

“No school today, please,” Will ignored the posed question and pleaded in his cutest, most desperate voice. 

“C’mon, aren’t you excited we finally get to be a couple in public?” 

Will’s face hardened as he contemplated being openly gay at Sky High. Would it be no big deal? Or would everyone react the way his dad did? 

Will shook his head to dismiss the thought. It didn’t matter what everyone else thought. Warren was all he needed. After a beat, he decided, 

“Yes. The whole world’s gonna know I belong to Warren Peace.”

“Good.” 

* * *

 

Still in his boxers and a tank top, Warren lazily made his way to the kitchen. Wiping sleeplessness from his eyes, he looked solemnly down at the assortment of brightly colored pill bottles on the counter and moved to open one (like he had every morning since he swallowed his pride and saw a “fucking quack shrink” to “give me some fucking Prozac or whatever for fucks sake” in 9th grade “‘cause it’s not like it could get any fucking worse, right?”) but stalled before uncapping it. Turning over his shoulder as if to keep guard, he exhaled heavily and resolved instead to bury the bottles deep in the back of the cabinet under the sink. He was happy, now. Things were better. He didn’t need chemicals to fill the void he now had a warm body to fill, right? 

He whipped up some chocolate chip pancakes with extra chocolate chips (‘cause he was a good boyfriend and he knew Will’s culinary palette never matured past the second grade), mixed a big glass of chocolate milk (“Orange juice tastes like fruit semen.” “Fruit semen?” “Yes, Warren.” “Okay, kiddo.”) and put on his best impression of a cheerful grin to bring breakfast-in-bed to his sleepy boy.

To his surprise, what he walked in on was a very distressed and sleepy boy in a pile of haphazardly discarded red, white, and blue clothes littering the bedroom floor. The helpless teen, slumped back with his ass on his heels, reminded Warren once again of a puppy: harmless, destructive, and so lovable all at the same time.  

Will looked up, in nothing but his one-side-stars-one-side-stripes boxer shorts-- and, for some reason unknown to Warren and probably also Will, only one white tube-sock-- looking like a deer in the headlights. His sheepish smile said “sorry” and “thank you” and “help me” all at once. Warren set the breakfast tray down on his bedside table and knelt down to console Will. 

“What’s goin’ on, puppy?” Warren slurred, eyes wide and full of empathy. Grumpy and tired, Will threw his old favorite tee shirt across the room. He didn’t even notice as the impact of his super-strength broke the glass out of a picture frame. 

“Everything’s red, white, and blue,” he whined. Warren’s brows crinkled in confusion. 

“Yeah, uh. That’s kind of your thing, right?” 

“No. That’s my parents’ thing. The ‘Stronghold Three’ thing.”

“Ah.”

“I just-- ugh!” he exclaimed, his sadness shifting into a dark anger. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them!” 

“Okay, I get it. I get it, baby boy, c’mere,” he spoke softly as he snuggled Will closer. “After school, you and me are going shopping and we’re going to find you a look that’s all yours, ‘kay?”

Will perked up marginally. 

“ _ You’re  _ gonna ‘Queer Eye’ me?” Will smirked. 

“Ha, ha. Okay I don’t know much about fashion, huh? We’ll bring Layla and Magenta, too, how’s that sound?”

“Good. That sounds good. But I’m  **_not_ ** going to school wearing this shit,” he protested, gesturing to the pile of clothes that surrounded him. 

“Okay, okay,” Warren glanced at his own closet and smiled, “I think I have an idea.” 

 


	2. Steve Stronghold Ships Stucky And Other Expositional Garbage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for homophobia. There's probably going to be a lot of it, but I'm going to really try to make this story uplifting ultimately. Please hold me to that in the comments.

When Will and Warren arrived through the doors of Sky High, all eyes were on them. Or rather, all eyes were on Will, who looked quite… unlike himself today. 

The only relics of his own wardrobe were his old blue jeans, now distressed and frayed beyond recognition and cuffed at the ankles, and his formerly pristine white converse, each of which he and Warren had scribbled and written on with black sharpie. Tucked into the light-wash jeans was one of Warren’s smallest shirts-- which was still loose on Will’s slender frame-- a dark grey v-neck with the too-wide sleeves cuffed around his biceps, hidden under a leather jacket similar to Warren’s signature one but in a dark red. To top it all off, he wore his hair (which he refused to let Warren dye red) tucked into a beanie that covered his ears (which he refused to let Warren pierce). In Warren’s words, Will looked “kind of like me but, remarkably, somehow gayer.”

“I look like an 11-year-old trick-or-treating as you,” Will complained to Warren, who proudly kept a tight grip on his hand as they walked down the hall. 

“Don’t say that,” Warren attempted to comfort him, “makes it weird that I totally wanna bone you right now.”

“That’s weird anyway.” 

“Why?”

“I look like you!” 

“So? I’d bone me.” 

“You’re a ridiculous person.” 

“You wouldn’t bone yourself?”

“No!”

“That’s lame. You’re hot.” 

 

***

“So. You’ve decided to join the Black Parade! Welcome!” joked Magenta when Will and Warren took their seats at the gang’s usual lunch table. 

“Yeah, yeah. Get all your jokes out now, we’re going shopping later. If I have to dress like a Bomb Pop for another day I’m gonna explode.” 

“Since when are you so unpatriotic?” 

If Will considered telling his friends everything that had gone on the night before, it wasn’t for long. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk about it. He figured they’d figure it out or ask soon enough.

“I’m just over it. Viva la revolucion,” he deadpanned.  

Warren exhaled and exaggerated the gesture of biting his fist in mock-arousal. “God, you’re hot.” He couldn’t quite decipher if the kick of Will’s shoe against his shin was a flirtation or a reprimand.

“ _ God, you’re horny _ ,” Layla taunted. 

 

Zack cleared his throat. Will still hadn’t been able to get a good read on Zack’s reaction to the whole  _ gay thing _ . Magenta and Layla had been supportive even before he came out, and Ethan was encouraging as soon as he saw the two boys holding hands that morning. Zach seemed… neutral, at best. Will didn’t pry, optimistic that the glowing boy’s initial discomfort would pass. He resolved that the tepid reception was favorable to the alternative, which he’d seen first-hand with his parents. Part of him clung to hope that if he could survive that, he could survive whatever his peers could throw at him; part of him knew that any more conflict might break him once and for all. 

Warren was less forgiving of Zack’s negligence to come out in support of Will and Warren’s romance. He didn’t say anything, as not to upset Will, but he was just about ready to show the boy how bright he could really glow if he said so much as the wrong word. 

 

“So…” Zack started. Warren balled his fingers into a fist under the table. “Have you given any thought to what your new colors are going to be?” 

Warren relaxed his hand, and Will let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

“Oh. No, I haven’t.”

“Can we all agree it’s not gonna be black and red?” asked Layla, “you know I love you, brother, but you look like a Cabbage Patch Kid drowned in a Hot Topic.” 

Will rolled his eyes and rubbed his temples. 

“What if you did, like, red and white? You could keep some of your old clothes, and you could coordinate with Warren without looking like a beagle took a nap in his laundry basket.” 

“How is everyone so  _ on _ with the analogies today? I change my style for one day and suddenly everyone I know is Emily Dickinson?” 

“Warren’s putting his dick-in… something….”

Everyone groaned except Will. 

“Thank you, Ethan! Finally, someone has a bad joke! See,  _ this _ is how natural human dialogue sounds!” 

“Happy to help.” 

 

“What if you just didn’t have a color scheme?”

“But Warren, everyone at Sky High has a color scheme. It’s like, tradition, or whatever. It’s just what superheroes are  _ supposed  _ to do,” offered Zack.  

Will tensed at that. He recalled a conversation he’d had with his father a few years before, one that was etched in his memory. 

 

_ It was before he’d met Warren. He was 11, without even an inkling that he might not be straight.  _

 

_ They’d just finished watching some Captain America movie. Will thinks it was “The First Avenger”, maybe “Winter Soldier”. Whatever. Steve had been rolling his eyes, scoffing and grumbling to himself throughout the entire movie.  _

_ “I hate the way these movies make us look,” Steve complained. “why does Captain America have to be so… queer?” Will tilted his head. _

_ “Like weird?” _

_ “No, no. His  _ relationship _ ,” he got out with a sour expression, “with the metal-armed man, it’s not right.” _

_ “What do you mean?”  _

_ Mr. Stronghold exhaled deeply and shook his head.  _

_ “You’ll understand when you’re older. All of these modern movies are making heroes into these,” he searched for the words, “weak, hyper-emotional  _ faggots _. It’s gross. **It’s not what heroes are supposed to be like.** ” _

_ “What are heroes supposed to be like?” _

_ He put his large hand on his son’s small shoulder.  _

_ “Well, son. Heroes fight crime, and do away with evil. But it’s more that that. One day, when you have your powers, fighting alongside me and your mom, you will be a role model to all the little boys in the world. America’s eyes will be on you to represent the power of good.” _

_ “Sounds like a lot,” he squeaked with widened eyes.   _

_ “It is,” hardly reassuring, “but you’re strong, Will. Super strong. You will be.”  _

_ “Okay.”  _

_ “Get to bed now, it’s late.”  _

_ As Will headed up the stairs, contemplative, his dad added: _

_ “And I don’t want you watching any more of those gay Marvel movies!”  _

 

“Are you okay, kiddo?” the firm press of Warren’s hand on his knee shook him out of his spell. He blinked for what must’ve been the first time in a while, his eyes straining, threatening to tear up. 

“I don’t think I’m going to have a color scheme,” declared Will. “Fuck what superheroes are supposed to do.”


End file.
